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Wednesday, November 27, 2013

Lucky me, during this school year I can split the grade 4 class in two groups of 12 children. This means I can devote some “golden” time to oral production without the inconveniences of a big group.

Last October we prepared a role-play, in which children had to play the role of customers and waiters/waitresses in a restaurant.

Children made their own special menus, they gave a name to our particular restaurant, they wrote the dialogues, and they look for some “attrezzo”, plan the rehearsal of the role-play and design the assessment rubric!

Lucky me (again!), the only thing I had to do was to correct some mistakes, and record the play in video.

Just some suggestions to remind us of the important things...The illustrations and the captions are from the book "Be Happy - A little book to help you live a happy life." by Monica Sheehan. The music is "Cuore di Sabbia" (Sand Heart) by Pasquale Catalano, from the soundtrack of the movie "Mine Vaganti" (Loose Cannons) directed by Ferzan Ozpetek.

A “Doing Project” unit is teacher-directed and it will see a linear series of often tightly-scripted activities that will culminate in a project.

Project Based Learning is student-centred and there is constant checking, revising, feedback, and reflection. PBL has a recursive nature: It starts at some point, and then at another point later the class moves on. This is the authentic–and messy–project-based learning.

Have a look at the following infographics, shared by Paul Curtis, with some key ideas on Project Working, Project Assessment and The Inquiry Process.

I just tried two games in the Fossils section. The first one “Dinos in Time” is very well organized information about the Mesozoic Era, from 225 million years ago, to 65 million years ago when dinosaurs suffered mass extinction.
The second was about reconstructing the bones that make up a horned dinosaur's front foot (a Chamosaur) and then watching a video.

You can find up to 30 games in this section related to fossils and dinosaurs, but you also have the mammals section and the birds section with dozens of on line games.

Just have a look! You will find the games and animations very appropriate for elementary school students. You can link them in your school blog as fun activities or for students to test the knowledge they gained from one of your lessons about mammals, birds, or dinosaurs.